In the countless many (4) DSL installations I’ve done, it’s always been apparent that there are two proved points about networking: 1) It never goes smoothly unless you’re doing it at home. 2) it makes me want to not be in the field of computers and instead go to baking or something. I’m not complaining about the concept of networking, because it’s one of the greatest ideas out there. The problem is when you get into a home that has an archaic computer or bad wiring. Unfortunately, this job was both.
Networking isn’t my speciality, so I suppose I’ve been lucky on the software end of things. I can do some of the basic non-DHCP stuff, but only between computers and computers or computers and routers. This installation was pretty simple - computer to access point. When I first got there, the computer was probably nine years old. The person using it was surprisingly adept at Windows, so that made things go a lot smoother.
The first problem was with the modem/computer connection. I knew USB on Win98 computers was horrible at best, and it’s understandable why Verizon could have done this, but I think it was cheap anyway - the USB installation in Verizon’s software is disabled for 98 and marked as “unsupported.” The computer didn’t have a network interface card (NIC). This is problem 1.
Following that, I called Verizon’s technical help. I got some lady in Virginia (I’m assuming it’s Virginia from the way she spoke) who had problems hearing us over the speakerphone (remember that). After she had gone down the checklist of things I did, she said that Verizon, in the past, got a bunch of computer inept idiots and those annoying kids that call up thinking they know everything (I’m just the opposite because I do know everything) reporting all kinds of technical problems with Windows 98 and Verizon’s service. Instead of fixing that, they just discontinued support because it was obviously costing them man-hours of free phone support.
That was the first problem.
So, she said that from her support center, they could try to enable USB installation ONCE to see if it work. When she tried to do that, she couldn’t reach the modem. She detected that the line had extreme static. One of the first things I noticed was fluorescent lighting, but I turned that off and it made no difference. I put the modem on other jacks - no difference. I eventually gave up and placed it to just random electromagnetic interference in the house, and she agreed.
That was the second problem.
Awhile later, after the lady who was trying to put the DSL in attempted to cancel the service (I’m not sure why she did), they offered to give her a PCI NIC adapter, which was exactly what she needed. From the get-go I knew this wouldn’t fix her problem (newer modems store their connection details on-site while older ones require a computer to dial in), but it would fix half of it. Today I went over and installed that. Went perfectly, but we still couldn’t figure out why the modem was unable to connect to the server. One of the things that occured to me was something I ran into at my grandfather’s - a dry-loop connection or something. Since his telephone infrastructure was older, something special was required to enable DSL to work. However, this residence was in a new development, so I ruled that out because our house was older and we were able to install DSL right on the phone line.
Later today, I came with my dad (who does wiring, so I figured he could run a dedicated phone line out to the outdoor telephone service box) to fix this problem once and for all. I thought of everything I needed beforehand - Laptop, another identical modem (stolen from my grandfather’s), extension cord. My goal was to at least narrow down the problem; I didn’t know if it was inside the house, or outside the house - the former would cost AT LEAST $90 to just get a technician out there while the latter is the company’s problem. I plugged the modem directly into the telephone access point outside the house and it worked immediately. I was even able to proceed to the account creation screen on the laptop. So, it was inside the house. Just a sidenote; it was a tad odd to be sitting on the ground with a laptop at 8 PM while having a tiny modem attached to an extension cord.
I realize I’m beginning to drag on, so I’ll get more to the point. We knew the problem was now inside the house, so we first wanted to make sure all the connections were fine with the phone jacks themselves. The area we were working in had closed walls, so there was no way we could easily look. My dad wanted to find a terminal so that we could run a new wire. We couldn’t find one in the walls, but we did find something peculiar - in another room, there was a hugeass splitter coming out from a phone jack. The wires in it were leading into other rooms. This was the terminal. We tried the wire to the computer directly in the jack - nothing. We tried another wire, then the modem worked perfectly.
We had narrowed it down again, but this time to just one strand of wire. We were about to give up when my dad noticed something. As soon as he held the plug up, I realized the problem before he even mentioned it, but I have to admit I wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t brought attention to it. The wires in the jack were switched. That was the cause of the “static” and it was purely responsible for making the line impure.
So, the night ended well - computer-modem was working and modem-ISP was working. Yay. The practical lesson of this post is to think outside the box. If something should logically work, check the most subtle thing you can. Only you can prevent forest fires. Stuff like that.
